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ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT THE 

> .- ■'■ 

I 



American Federation of Labor Convention, 



AT PHILADELPHIA, PA., 1892, 



BY 



Hon. HENRY W. BLAIR, 



Ex-U. S. Senator and Present Congressman. 



PUBLISHED BY THE 

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF EABOR, 
14 Clinton Place, New York City, 







MDDRESS 



DELIVERED AT THE 



American Federation of Labor Convention, 

At Philadelphia, Pa., 1892, 

By Hon. Henry W. Blair, Ex. U. S. Senator and Present Congressman. 



Gentlemen of the American Federation of Labor: 

Having devoted the larger part of my life 
to the military and civil service of our country 
in the special interest of the masses of our peo- 
ple, as I have understood that interest, it is 
with unfeigned gratification that I respond to 
the cordial invitation of my long time friend 
and co-laborer in the same cause, the President 
of this great Convention, a Convention which 
represents the rights and hopes of the masses of 
men as truly as did our fathers when they pro- 
claimed the immortal declaration from this 
very hall to the listening world, to read to you 
a brief paper upon the origin, character and 
object of what has come to be known in the 
current history of the country as the "Blair 
Education Bill." 

I may be pardoned for introducing here the 
correspondence which has brought me before 
you on this occasion : 

"American Federation of Labor, 
New York, Nov. 25, 1892. 

Hon. Henry W. Blair : 

My Dear Sir — By a reference to the enclosed 
circular you will note that the American Fed- 
eration of Labor will hold its Twelfth Annual 
Convention at Independence Hall, Philadel- 
phia, Pa., December 12-17. 

Our organization, so widely distributed 
throughout the country, is deeply interested 
in all questions tending to improve the mate- 
rial and moral conditions of our people, and 
recognizing in you one of those staunch and 
true men who have ever been ready with voice 
and pen to aid in that task, I hereby invite 
you to read a paper at our Convention on the 
third day of its session, namely, December 14. 

You are aware that the American Federa- 
tion of Labor at several of its Conventions has 
endorsed the 'Educational Bill' you had the 
honor of introducing in the United States 
Senate. I would therefore suggest that your 
paper be upon that subject. 



I sincerely hope that you will accept the 
invitation and that you will notify me thereof. 
Permit me to take this opportunity of con- 
gratulating you upon your election to Con- 
gress, under the circumstances. With such 
an enormous adverse majority in the district, 
and in view of the almost tidal wave of votes 
in the opposite direction, your triumph is a 
compliment ot the highest order, a vindication 
and an answer to the tirade of abuse heaped 
upon you by a malicious or ignorant press. 
Yery truly yours, 

Samuel Gompers, 
President American Federation of Labor. ' ' 



"Manchester, N. H., Nov. 29, 1892. 

My Dear Sir — Your cordial letter of con- 
gratulation upon my recent election to the 
National House of Representatives is received, 
and for it and for your letter given to the pub- 
lic in my behalf during the canvass, please ac- 
cept my sincere thanks. 

Our acquaintance, I trust that you will per- 
mit me to say our friendship rather, has been 
constant during the considerable period which 
has elapsed since the investigation by the Sen- 
ate Committee on Education and Labor of the 
relations between labor and capital in 1883, 
and through all these years of misrepresenta- 
tion and abuse which have pursued me, and 
will, no doubt, until I die, in consequence 
mainly of the part which it was my duty to 
take as chairman of the committee in compel- 
ling a fair hearing for the voice of labor betore 
the committee and by the country against the 
opposition of hostile interests, you have not 
failed in manifestations of sympathy, appre- 
ciation and support. 

It is now seen and admitted that this inves- 
tigation was the breaking up plow which pre- 
pared the way for the great results already re- 
alized and for the magnificent harvests yet to 
be. 

Industrial and social problems are now at 



the forefront of American politics, where they 
belong, and they can never be displaced until 
they are solved and settled, and they cannot 
be settled until they are settled right. What- 
ever is at the front in the politics of America 
must soon take the same place in the politics 
of the world. 

Ideas which were "cranky" then are com- 
monplace now, and we are gratified to see 
great editors and wise statesmen advocating 
measures which then excited only their pro- 
found contempt. It is the way of the world, 
however, and there will never be a different 
way until there is a different world. So let 
us try to accomplish a little more good in the 
world, if we are laughed at and ridiculed, and 
even lied about for our pains by wise men 
who don't know any better. 

Your kind invitation to read a short article 
before the Federation of Labor on the 14th of 
December at Philadelphia upon the ' Education 
Bill ' will be complied with if I can possibly 
find time for its preparation. Thanking you 
once more, I am truly yours, 

Henry W Blair. 
To Samuel Gompers, President American Fed- 
eration of Labor" 



Evolution may develop protoplasm into man, 
but it is education, the development of the in- 
dividual soul, which makes the difference be- 
tween the savage and the sage, and so between 
barbarism and civilization. And when human 
beings aspire to the pursuit of happiness and 
to preserve their liberties by self-government, 
they find that capacity for enjoyment and 
ability to control themselves and society de- 
pend upon that power which comes from 
knowledge alone. 

Human happiness is founded upon knowl- 
edge. Action is the result of impulse or be- 
lief, and without knowledge the former is 
mere brute force and the latter is nothing but 
superstition. Without knowledge popular 
government is but anarchy, and despotism is 
the only hope of an ignorant people. This 
country has never been a free country except 
so far as the people have known enough to 
achieve liberty and to preserve it. Ignorance 
is slavery and slavery is ignorance. These 
terms are convertible and each is only a differ- 
ent name for the other. Sometimes slavery is 
written into the constitutions and laws of- a 
country and sometimes it is not, but it matters 
little whether an ignorant man is a slave by 
the statutes of his country. Slavery is a con- 
dition and it is the outgrowth of the weakness 
that is in ignorance, for as knowledge is 
power so ignorance is impotence. Ignorant 
men are incapable of organization. 

Intelligent men only can combine and 
union is strength. Organized labor can be- 



come so and can remain so only by being in- 
telligent and continuing to be intelligent. 

There is to-day in this country and in the 
world just so much of slavery as there is of 
ignorance — no more, no less. So it always 
will be among the masses of men and the na- 
tions of the earth. I have always believed 
that our common school system is the repub- 
lic. We have and we can have no other all 
pervading institution which can reach the 
American child and transform him into an in- 
telligent — that is to say, into a free man. 
Private and denominational schools may per- 
form a partial work and perform it well, but 
nothing will shed universal sunshine save only 
the public school, which can enlighten the 
head and warm the heart of every growing 
citizen of our land. 

But the necessary and legitimate work of 
the public school has never yet been fully nor 
even well performed in the country as a 
whole; and there is still a vast degree of slav- 
ery among the people both North and South. 

Before the Civil War there was no system, 
nor even any general desire for the education 
of the children of the masses of either race in 
that part of the country where the negro was 
enslaved by written laws. On the contrary it 
was plainly perceived that those who had the 
power to enslave others must keep all but 
their own class in ignorance or that universal 
knowledge would produce universal sovereign- 
ity and dissolve their aristocracy in the great 
ocean of homogeneous democracy. 

So ignorance, that is to say slavery, was the 
general condition in the Southern part of the 
country. 

In the North the contrary spirit was 
stronger. The masses knew more and were 
correspondingly more free. 

The effort to extend the condition of ignor- 
ance and slavery into the territories was made 
necessary by the nature of things, for an aris- 
tocracy is built upon the intelligence of the 
few and the ignorance of the many, and if in- 
telligence and consequent freedom should 
dominate the territories, when they became 
States in the union, and were combined with 
the old relatively free states, schools and edu- 
cation would everywhere abound and in the 
end, light and liberty would fill the whole land 
and all would be free because all would have 
the power which is in knowledge to seize and 
maintain their rights. 

It must be remembered that ignorant labor is 
always cheap labor, and an aristocracy, which 
is nothing but a great monopoly of the rights 
of the masses in the hands of the few, can 
never steal the production of the people's toil 
through the agency of low wages and cheap 
prices of commodities into which that toil is 
converted, when the people know enough to 
prevent it by making and administering the 



laws in their own interest and for the general 
good. 

It was more and more apparent as the years 
of reconstruction, so called, passed away, and 
is now more apparent than ever to close and 
patriotic observers, that slavery was only 
nominally abolished by the war and that 
nothing could make the people, white and col- 
ored at the South free indeed, and remove the 
evils of ignorance at the North and throughout 
the whole country, but a national effort to 
spread and invigorate the common school. 

Systems theoretically good had been es- 
tablished in every State, but they were, 
throughout the South especially, systems 
only, without vitality, and requiring that in- 
fusion of energy which money and enthusiasm 
alone could impart. 

But the Southern States seemed to be 
wholly under the control of the Ante bellum 
power, and the general destruction of values 
and the disorganization resulting from the 
war made, it hard to develop an institution 
which was seen to be a real proclamation of 
emancipation, which included in its beneficent 
terms both races and which eradicated slavery 
and aristocracy and cheap prices and low 
wages altogether, and distributed wealth and 
power and liberty among the whole people, 
where they belong. 

It was also found that the common school, 
as an institution, was deteriorating at the 
North. > Alas ! it is still deteriorating, as wit- 
ness the reports of Superintendent Draper of 
the great State of New York, and the revela- 
tions of the census of 1890. 

It was found that labor at the South was 
not accumulating wealth as a result of nominal 
freedom. The old master class still owned 
the land and made the laws, and therefore 
really owned all who labored on the land and 
were subject to the laws. The suffrage while 
nominally universal was really to the people 
at large, only a mass of fuss and feathers, or 
worse, and the power was still in the hands of 
the intelligent few who wielded it, as power 
is always wielded, for the benefit of those who 
have it. 

Considering the burdens of which the land 
owners and masters were relieved the negro 
continued to work as cheaply as when in 
slavery — as a rule, that is for his board and 
clothes, and that care which preserved him in 
the condition of a good working animal; and 
the white laborer at his side must work at the 
same pay or lose the employment, without 
which he coul d not live. 

Intelligent Northern labor also saw that 
unless this system of cheap, because ignorant, 
labor at the South could be broken up that it 
would be just as well to compete directly with 
the cheap labor of Europe as with that of the 
Southern States, and that protection, which 



could come only by educating the Southern 
laboring man until he knew how to demand 
and obtain just compensation, was indispens- 
able to the salvation of the higher wages and 
corresponding civilization of the North. Re- 
duced to the same hours and other conditions 
it was seen, and is still seen, that agricultural, 
mechanical and operative labor in the South- 
ern States produces at little more than half 
the cost to the owner of the product which 
the same product costs at the North. Capital, 
quick to see and embrace the opportunity to 
locate where labor was cheap and raw ma- 
terial on the spot, and where free trade be- 
tween the States gives unfettered intercourse, 
was hurrying, as it still is, to take advantage 
of the same conditions which would exist if 
our tariffs with foreign countries were all re- 
pealed. 

The census of 1880 revealed in cold figures 
a startling condition of ignorance and insuffi- 
ciency of teachers, school houses and appli- 
ance for the education of children, especially 
in the Southern States. 

By that census it appeared that there were 
sixteen millions of children in the country of 
school age, of whom six millions were not en- 
rolled, that is to say, did not attend school 
at all. 

Out of the whole sixteen millions there was 
an average daily attendance during the school 
terms of less than six millions. Many of the 
school terms would not be more than two or 
three months for the entire year. Not over 
six hundred thousand were enrolled in private 
schools. 

Out of a total population of fifty millions, 
more than five millions, over ten years of age, 
could not read, and more than six and one- 
fourth millions could not write. 

It should be remembered that this test is a 
very low one, and that probably more than 
ten millions of our people over ten years of 
age, were and still are not sufficiently edu- 
cated to enable them to learn and discharge 
intelligently the duties of citizenship. Two 
millions of legal voters, or about one in five, 
could not read and write, of whom nine hun- 
dred thousand were white voters and eleven 
hundred thousand were colored. Not less than 
four out often millions of voters were so imper- 
fectly educated that they could not read the 
common newspapers of the day intelligently. 

For all practical purposes two-fifths of the 
legal voters could not read intelligently and 
one-fifth could not read at all. 

The Northern States had about two-thirds 
of the population and one-third of the illiter- 
acy; four-fifths of the taxable property, and 
the South one -fifth. The colored people were 
about one-third the Southern population, and 
the whites owned more than nine-tenths of 
the property. The Southern white owned 



•about one-fourth the amount of taxable prop- 
erty ^that is owned by the citizens of the 
North, and has at least four times the burden 
to bear in order to give as good education to 
the children of the South as is obtained by the 
children of the North. Less than one-sixth 
of the money expended to support public 
schools in the country was expended in the 
.South, where one-third of the children reside, 
and much of the instruction given was of in- 
ferior quality. 

In some of the cities there were good schools 
for a part of the children, but four-fifths of them 
them live in the country, while even in the most 
most favored cities there were great numbers of 
children for whom no provision at all was made. 
A striking fact was and is that greater desti- 
tution existed among the children of the poor 
white people than among the colored children, 
upon whom Northern charity was almost 
wholly concentrated. It is surely time that 
the sympathy of the nation be aroused for 
these white children, for if they be not edu- 
cated neither race can rise. 

I learned by careful investigation that more 
white than colored children were suffering for 
education in the South. 

It was ascertained by actual counting of the 
record of deeds in the county of Winston, Ala- 
bama, that seven out of every ten deeds exe- 
cuted by white men, and nine out of every ten 
by white women, were signed by the mark or 
X of the grantor. 

In his inaugural message of March, 1881, 
President Garfield said: "The danger which 
arises from ignorance in the voter can not be 
denied. It is a danger which lurks and hides 
in the fountains of power in every State. 

"The census has already sounded the alarm 
in the appalling figures which mark how dan- 
gerously high the tide of illiteracy has arisen 
among our voters and their children. The 
nation itself is responsible for the extension of 
the suffrage. For the North and the South 
alike there is but one remedy. All the con- 
stitutional power of the nation and of the States, 
and all the volunteer forces of the people should 
, be summoned to meet this danger by the sav- 
I ing influence of universal education." 

The great problem in American affairs, and 
in fact in the affairs of mankind, is how to 
, educate, mentally, morally, physically, the 
children of the country. 

In the first Congress of which I was a mem- 
: ber, the 44th, in the year 1876, I endeavored 
1 to arouse the attention of the people by an ex- 
i tended review of the general subject and an 
; earnest appeal to the country made in the 
House of Representatives, which was gener- 
ally circulated among the people. 

This speech was entitled "Our Free Schools; 
Are They in Danger ?" and so far as I know 
was the first serious effort to raise the ques- 



tion of popular education in the National 
Congress, and to meet the emergency that 
was and still is upon us by substantial aid, 
when it was necessary, from the national 
power to be exerted through and in conjunc- 
tion with the public school systems of the 
States, when possible, based upon the neces- 
sity of intelligence to the general welfare of 
the whole country and especially upon the 
necessity of intelligence in the voter who con- 
trols the existence and destiny of the nation 
as well as that of the States. 

When I entered the Senate in 1879 I re- 
solved to devote myself to this subject and 
the kindred one of industrial and social de- 
velopment and elevation, until something 
definite should be accomplished. 

Various suggestions had been made and 
bills introduced and acted upon in one or the 
other House of Congress, having in view the 
establishment of a national fund, the interest 
whereon should be distributed to the States, 
but the relief proposed was not appreciable 
in view of the extent and enormity of the evil, 
and nothing further was done, and nothing 
further was proposed until the introduction of 
the Original Education Bill in 1881, with 
which my name has since then been associ- 
ated. I had prepared every phrase of this 
bill with great care. 

This was a proposition to extend and vital- 
ise the common school system by the appro- 
priation of one hundred and twenty millions 
of dollars, to be distributed to the States in 
installments during the next ten years and ex- 
pended through the existing school machinery 
of the States, upon conditions which should 
secure the faithful application of the public 
treasure to the impartial education of all who 
should attend the public schools, the basis of 
distribution being the existing necessity as in- 
dicated by the census returns of illiteracy 
from the several States. 

No permanent connection of the National 
Government with the support of the public 
schools of the States was thought likely to be 
necessary. It was believed that once the 
benefits of education being diffused, the people 
of every localitv would forever after maintain 
them. The bill was therefore properly en- 
titled, "A bill to aid in the establishment and 
temporary support of common schools." 

The States were to decide for themselves 
whether they would accept or reject the prof- 
fered aid, but if accepted it was to be faithfully 
expended for the benefit of all the children of 
proper age who should desire to attend the 
public schools. 

The masses of the people North and South 
comprehended at once the vast significance 
and saving effect of this bill. 

The common people heard it gladly and 
rallied generally to its support. 



Probably no measure ever submitted to them 
has received such universal approval from the 
plain people of our country. 

During the remaining ten years of my life 
in the Senate, I did all that I could, and you 
did all that you could to secure the enactment 
of this bill into law. Three times it passes 
the Senate, but it never was possible to secure 
its consideration by the House of Representa- 
tives, except by Committees. Upon its fourth 
and last consideration by the Senate in the 
first session of the Fifty-first Congress, the 
bill failed to pass to its third reading, through 
the unexpected defection of two of its supposed 
supporters whose votes with that of the Vice- 
President would have given the bill its third 
reading and passage. Thereupon I changed 
my vote for the purpose of moving a reconsider- 
ation in the hope that later in the Session a 
favorable result might be obtained, but the 
tariff, and federal election bills intervened and it 
was never possible again to bring up the educa- 
tion bill. The Congress expired and my con- 
nection with the Senate al^o in March, 1891, 
and the bill has so far failed to become a law. 

Under the pressure of the mighty influences 
which combat and seek the destruction of the 
common school system in this country, many 
public men, originally for the bill, forsook it 
and fled, and some of them became its most 
bitter opponents. The same is true of the 
press. But I trust that those influences, those 
men and the press, animated by an elevated 
patriotism, may change. The sum proposed 
to be distributed by the measure, when last it 
was under consideration, was $79,000,000, 
during a period of eight 3^ears, an average of 
about $10,000,000 — (one-half the River and 
Harbor bill) — annually, of which about two- 
thirds would have gone to the Southern States 
where at present not more than $18,000,000 or 
$20,000,000 are yearly expended among one- 
third of the children of the country, while at 
least $100,000,000 are expended at the North, 
or two and one-half times as much for each 
child as in the South. 

This makes no allowances for the necessary 
sum for school houses, for which an immediate 
expenditure of $40,000,000 would not fully 
provide and furnish suitable houses for the 
accommodation of the school population now 
unsupplied. 

The annual expenditure of the country for 
pensions is $165,000,000, and the amount is in- 
creasing, more than twice that sum proposed to 
be expended by the education bill in the whole 
eight years of its contemplated operation. 

During the same period $160,000,000 will 
be spent for Rivers and Harbors, or twice that 
proposed for removing the shoals and quick- 
sands and rocks and whirlpools of ignorance, 
and the bars of slavery, from the waters of our 
national life; and for war in time of peace 
which but for ignorance of the people would 



be impossible at least $500,000,000 will be ex- 
pended in this land of the free during the next 
two National Administrations. 

This bill would have elevated the masses of 
the people of the South to the conditions which 
prevail at the North; would have removed the 
competition of Southern cheap labor which 
hurts the Northern market for labor and pro- 
duction to day more than does the competition 
of Europe; by increasing the purchasing power 
of her own people would have created at the 
South a great market for her increased produc- 
tion without injuring ours; and thus would 
have blessed the North and South alike, and 
have made us one great homogenous Nation, 
wealthy, powerful and free. 

The defeat of the education bill was not 
only a calamity; it was a crime — a crime 
against humanity 

What would have been our condition now 
if the education bill had been passed, even if 
the Force bill for which it was sacrificed had 
failed, as it did fail; notwithstanding? There 
is no force but education, and no Force bill 
but a*n education bill which can save the 
suffrage and the civilization of this country. 

But I forbear to comment upon recent his- 
tory further, and leave those who defeated the 
education bill, Republicans and Democrats, 
North and South, to their own reflections. I 
am guiltless of this innocent blood. 

We must deal with the future, but let us 
learn wisdom from the past to guide our way. 

It has been claimed that it is better that 
each locality should take care of itself, and 
that if let alone it will do so, but this theory 
has been tried and under it have been de- 
veloped the evil conditions which we have seen. 

The question is between the Nation, the 
State and the parent on one side, and the help- 
less child on the other. So far the child has 
gone to the wall, and in time, when he be- 
comes the parent, the State and the Nation, 
his child inherits the hard conditions which 
gave him a poverty stricken, incompetent and 
helpless sire. Only those who have can give 
and they declined to give when the education 
bill failed. 

I will trouble you longer only to notice the 
present condition. of education in the country. 
The tremendous struggles and prolonged dis- 
cussions which have characterized the twelve 
years of effort to secure temporary national 
aid to common schools have greatly aroused 
the people to the condition of popular educa- 
tion, and to the necessity of greater exertions 
if the curse of general ignorance is not in the 
end to overthrow our institutions \>y placing 
the balances of power in the hands of ignorant 
voters who shall be used by public enemies to 
control elections and so to govern the coun- 
try. 

This much at least has been accomplished, 
and perhaps after all it will be found that to 



have awakened the Nation to its danger was 
the only necessary thing. The people will 
find a way to save themselves when the danger 
is pointed out. 

But we are told that schools and intelligence 
are increasing. So also is popular ignorance 
increasing, and ignorance, in this country, is 
increasing faster than intelligence — certainly 
this is so in many parts of our land. 

The New York Times has recently shown in 
an elaborate examination of the census returns, 
that the public school system is waning at the 
North. 

Mr. George W. Cable, in an article publish- 
ed in the November number of the Cosmopoli- 
tan, has explained how the ' 'Gentleman gov- 
ernments" of the South are neglecting the 
education of the multiplying youth of that 
great section. 

True, that school enrollments are increas- 
ing, but this country grows in all directions, 
and ignorance fully holds its own. 

In some localities the appropriation of pub- 
lic funds for the construction of school houses 
is prohibited. 

Mr. Cable observes : "Much is to be heard 
of a gradual increase in the yearly outlays for 
schools in the South; but the increase in pop- 
ulation which it scarcely more than keeps pace 
with, goes of ten unnoted. In the four States 
of North and South Carolina, Georgia and 
Louisiana, in the school year ending 1 888, and 
in Florida and Alabama in 1888-89, the high- 
est increase in the years school outlay per 
capita of total school population was six and 
one-half cents, and the average in the six 
States four cents. At this rate it would take 
them just seventy years to reach the present 
per capita outlay of Iowa; but Iowa's increase 
per capita is over twice as large. 

Whether we look at school laws or school 
statistics, there seems to be no escape for us 
from the conclusion that a gentleman's gov- 
ernment makes for the free school, a rather 
poor step mother." * * * "It suppresses not 
illiteracy, but the illiterate." But I must how- 
ever refer you to the article, for there is no 
time to quote. » 

The natural attempt is made to varnish the 
condition of those sections of the country which 
most need it, but the decay and deformity and 
the structural weakness are there, and they are 
in the North and West as well as in the 
South. 

I have said that I believe that the education 
of the people will again come under considera- 
tion in the halls of Congress, and that I believe 
that the opposition of former years will not be 
repeated. 

In this connection it must be a source of the 
greatest satisfaction to every lover of his country 
to observe the recent action of the leading 
prelates of the Catholic church in the United 
States, understood to be approved and prob- 



ably inspired by the Pope himself, indicating 
the withdrawal of opposition to the public 
school system on the part of the authorities of 
that great organization. 

In the year 1886, I had correspondence with 
Archbishop Corrigan upon the subject, and in 
a letter dated May 31st of the year expressed 
my views upon the school question in a line 
which will show how free from bigotry have 
been my utterances in the past in regard to the 
well-known opposition made by a certain ele- 
ment in the church to the passage of the school 
bill. It is with special joy that I note the in- 
creasing liberality of the church toward our 
free school system. It is an omen of good to 
our country and to mankind. 

With the anticipated acquiesence and prob- 
able co-operation of the Catholic power in this 
country, the friends of the education bill may 
well feel assured of its passage in the near 
future. 

I look upon the recent authoritative utter- 
ance of the Catholic bishops delivered in New 
York as a great declaration of progress, in- 
dicating the ushering in of a new era of 
religious toleration and civil freedom in this 
country — I had almost said among men. 

When men of all denominations and creeds 
and men of no denomination or creed unite in 
the harmonious support of one great universal 
comprehensive system of education for all the 
children of the land, the time is not ages away 
when intolerance, bigotry, ignorance and 
superstition will disappear in the pure and holy 
light of that higher physical, moral, intel- 
lectual and spiritual development of human 
nature, the vision of which inspired the 
prophets until they broke forth in rapt strains 
of millenial glory, * 

I read this letter as a reply to some criticism 
to which I have myself been subjected, but 
mainly in the hope that its contents may in- 
dicate how free the terms of the education 
bill and the minds of its supporters have al- 
ways been from any tendency to narrow sec- 
tarian or partisan ends: 

[copy.] 

United States Senate, 
Washington, D. C, May 3, 1886. 

My Dear Sir — I this morning had the honor 
to receive your card enclosed to me by mail 
from New York, for which please accept my 
thanks, and at the same time excuse the 
liberty I take by forwarding to you a speech 
recently made by me upon the measure of 
temperance reform, which seems to me most 
radical and necessary to be adopted if the war- 
fare against the evil of alcohol is to be per- 
manently successful. 

The great ability and earnest devotion which 
you have consecrated to the temperance re- 
form, leads me to hope that you will examine 
these views with care before rejecting them or 



denying to them that indispensible support 
which every successful national movement 
must receive from the controlling forces of the 
Catholic church. 

I also forward to you with more misgivings 
but from a sense of duty a copy of the School 
Bill lately passed by the Senate, now pending 
in the House of Representatives, together with 
remarks of my own and data bearing upon this 
important subject. 

The bill has been opposed here with quiet 
but vigorous efforts by certain leading men 
and influences in the church, for which I have 
great personal respect. 

While it is no part of my duty to criticise 
the conscientious work of others in opposition 
to this all important measure for the general 
good of all churches and all people without 
distinction, I cannot ignore the fact of such 
opposition, nor avoid the expression of my 
deep regret that it exists. 

The Catholic church in modern times must 
depend upon the increasing intelligence of the 
people for that increase of its holy influence 
and beneficial power which I believe to be de- 
sired by every liberal, thoughtful and patriotic 
American citizen. 

But the common schooi is the cradle of our 
civil institutions. 

No power but the state can reach every child 
and to oppose general common school educa- 
tion or universal provision for such education 
is to strike directly at the existence of the 
Republic. 

The parochial school can never reach the 
people at large. No force can destroy nor in 
the end restrain the common school. The 
masses of the Catholic church themselves will 
never permit this to be done. 

Let the church advance to the very front of 
the free and liberal tendencies of the times and 
by her immense power take a leading if not 
the leading part in the universal establishment 
and general support of the common school and 
thereby permeate that institution with the 
proper degree of moral and religious training 
which the religious element of society can so 
easily supply to it. 

/The opposite course will certainly shake if 
not shatter our civil institutions and will in- 
evitably limit the growth and happy influence 
of that great and venerable organization, to 
whose spread the American people have no op- 
position, save only from the fear that it will 
strike down their free schools. I am a Pro- 
testant by birth and education, but I perceive 
and acknowledge the immense service of the 
mother church to my country and to mankind. 
I would die as promptly to secure for her and 
her most humble membership absolute religi- 
ous liberty as for my own faith. I write this 
letter in the earnest hope that active effort 
may yet be made to assist and not^to prevent 
the passage of this bill proposing temporary 



Federal aid to common schools. It is impos- 
sible to estimate the good which such a step 
authoritatively taken would do to the country 
and to the church. How would the hearts of 
many millions, now full of prejudice and op- 
position turn warmly and trustfully to your 
communion were this to be done. I know 
that I speak the truth when I say that this, I 
think, mistaken policy of opposition to free 
schools which, if continued, will some time re- 
sult in serious demonstrations, is the only 
thing which prevents the almost universal ex- 
pansion of the Catholic church in this country. 

The times change and old policies must pass 
away, for come what will, every child must 
and will be educated in the free public school. 

Let the church do and shape the doing of 
that which must be done, either with or with- 
out us all. 

I greatly fear that the expression of these 
views may be deemed to be uncalled for, but 
I shall rely upon my knowledge of your high 
personal character to excuse any impropriety 
I may have committed, either in thought or 
expression, by attributing it to a zeal which, 
however it may lack for knowledge, has at 
least a worthy motive to justify it. I feel sure 
that a careful perusal of the bill will demon- 
strate that it originated in no hostility to the 
church or to any religious denomination, and 
that it only aims to secure to those who are 
without any schools whatever, either public, 
private or parochial, the means of escape from 
an ignorance which no earthly agency would 
otherwise remove. 

It does not attack a domain already occu- 
pied by *he church or by anyone else. It 
seeks to accomplish a good which otherwise 
will remain undone. 

Should an examination of its provisions 
fail to bear out the truth of my interpretation, 
I would myself be the first to suggest their 
modification. With profound respect, your 
obedient servant, Henry W. Blair. 

A rchbishop Corriga?i. ' ' 



Yes, the instinct of self-preservation will 
compel the American nation to educate its 
children in order that we may preserve our 
liberties. No party and no creed can survive 
a contest with the public schools. I believe 
that the day is now at hand when those who 
have opposed the public school system will 
see a more excellent way. A larger charity, 
a loftier patriotism, a more comprehensive and 
all-embracing benevolence is filling and exalt- 
ing the souls of our people, and beyond and 
above it all I behold a sublime religious unity 
and a political equality, fraternity and happi- 
ness of which the world has hitherto conceiv- 
ed only in dreams. 

Gentlemen of the American Federation of 
Labor, behold your work ! I appeal to you 
to perform it. 



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